"I hope you haven't been foolish, Oliver," she said in a tone which conveyed an emotional sympathy as well as a moral protest. "That depends upon what you mean by foolishness," he returned, still smiling. "Well, I don't think you ought to quarrel with Cyrus. He may not be perfect. I am not saying that he mightn't have been a better husband, for instance--though I always hold the woman to blame when a marriage turns out a failure--but when all's said and done, he is a great man, Oliver." He shook his head impatiently. "I've heard that until I'm sick of it--forgive me, Cousin Priscilla." "Everybody admires him--that is, everybody except Belinda." "I should say she'd had excellent opportunities for forming an opinion. What's he ever done, anyhow, that's great," he asked almost angrily, "except accumulate money? It seems to me that you've gone mad over money in Dinwiddie. I suppose it's the reaction from having to do without it so long." Miss Priscilla, whose native serenity drew strength from another's loss of temper, beamed into his flushed face as if she enjoyed the spectacle of his heightened colour. "You oughtn't to talk like that, Oliver," she said. "How on earth are you going to fall in love and marry, if you haven't any money to keep a wife? What you need is a good girl to look after you. I never married, myself, but I am sometimes tempted to believe that even an unhappy marriage is better than none at all. At least it gives you something to think about." "I have enough to think about already. I have my work." "But work isn't a wife." "I know it isn't, but I happen to like it better." Her matchmaking instinct had received a check, but the placid determination which was the basis of her character was merely reinforced thereby to further efforts. It was for his good to marry (had not her mother and her grandmother instilled into her the doctrine that an early marriage was the single masculine safeguard, since, once married, a man's morality became not his own business, but his wife's), and marry him she was resolved to do, either with his cheerful co-operation, or, if necessary, without it. He had certainly looked at Virginia as if he admired her, and surely a girl like that--lovely, loving, unselfish to a fault, and trained from her infancy to excel in all the feminine virtues--surely, this perfect flower of sex specialization could have been designed by Providence only for the delight and the sanctification of man. "Then, if that is the way your mind is made up I hope you will be careful not to trifle with the feelings of a girl like Jinny Pendleton," she retorted severely.